Now that Thor and a Gaulish thunderer have been brought together, they cannot be allowed to part company at once. The former is known to have been credited with possessing a celebrated hammer called Mjölnir, with which he performed his feats of might, and the word is probably of the same origin as the Welsh malu, 'to grind;' Latin molo, 'I grind,' molina, 'a mill;' English meal; and related words, with a certain option between r and l, occur in the Latin martulus, 'a hammer;' Old Bulgarian mlatŭ, the same, mlatiti, 'to hammer or beat.' Moreover, as the lightning was the hammer or the bolt of the thunder-god, several of the kindred vocables had that meaning, such as Old Bulgarian mlŭnij Old Prussian mealde, and Welsh 'ment,' singular ' meỻten,' 'a lightning.' Thor's manner of using his mighty hammer was to throw or hurl it; and a similar idea underlies the Welsh word 'ỻuched,' 'ỻucheden,' a lightning, which literally means what is cast or thrown, as it comes from the same etymon as 'ỻuchio,' 'to cast or throw.' Here may be mentioned three remarkable terms for thunderbolts, recorded by Dr. Pughe in his Dictionary under the word 'ỻuched:' they are Ceryg y Lluched, 'the stones of the cast or the lightning;' Ceryg y Cythraul, 'the stones of the devil;' and Ceryg y Gythreulies, 'the stones of the she-devil.' Before the thunderer's weapon developed into a hammer, it must have been a stone, more nearly resembling Thor's dreaded weapon.[1] It was hard, however, for a Roman to avoid falling into error in regard to the Gaulish thunder-divinities. Thus the wheel-god,
- ↑ Compare the A.-Saxon reference to the thunder 'with the fiery axe' (mid đǽre fýrenan æcxe) in the Dialogue of Salomon and Saturn, ed. Kenable (London, 1848), p. 118, also 177.
